


loving is easy

by gaypasta



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Abusive Parents, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, M/M, no beta we die like men, not detailed though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-11 14:01:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19539682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaypasta/pseuds/gaypasta
Summary: Bill Denbrough doesn't believe in love.[[well that was a fucking lie]]





	loving is easy

**Author's Note:**

> hi this is a short drabble from tumblr - not beta read at ALL so i apologise for any errors!

Bill Denbrough didn’t ever want to fall in love. 

His parents had fallen in love, they took photos on the beach and went to festivals and the pictures of his Mom at twenty riding his Dad’s shoulders had been wedged in the back of the photo album, yellowed with age and dog-eared from examination. His parents fell in love in the summer, they were friends at first but they were in love with each other for years before Zack had kissed her in the middle of a moshpit of some punk band they both pretended to like. 

It was a fast romance, they loved each other wholly and completely and would kiss each other every morning before work, Zack would get up every night to feed Georgie and Sharon would carry Georgie and Bill into bed with a cup of coffee so her husband could wake up to the three people who he loved the most. 

Every Thursday night Bill would hide in his room and do his homework, because the babysitter that the Denbroughs had hired to look after him and his brother on their weekly date night was so sweet and beautiful, Bill’s face was permanently red. They would wake Bill and Georgie up with their soft, blissful giggles as they walk through their home some six hours later - giddy with each other’s company, walking past framed family photos which stared back with warm smiles and bright eyes.

The newer pictures were desaturated. Forced smiles, his parents sitting with a good foot between them, Georgie with red puffy eyes because their Dad had yelled at him to stop talking so loudly when he was showing them the new action figure Bill’s cool friend Ben had bought him. Bill with a tight jaw and a gentle hand on his little brother’s shoulder, wishing he was anywhere else. 

Love aged like curdled milk in Bill’s head. Soft giggles and loud whispers in the early hours of the morning that used to rouse him slowly shifted to harsh whispers, then arguments, then shouting and screaming and kitchen doors being slammed and cups of bitter coffee being thrown at the stained walls. Love shifted from a loving family, with day trips kayaking and teaching Georgie how to ride his first bike to having arguments about who would have to sit through Bill’s parent-teacher meetings, never openly admitting neither of them cared about their son more than they hated each other. Bill and Georgie rushing through the kitchen door with food on the table and their TV already tuned onto their favorite after-school cartoon over time had become Bill trying to balance cooking dinner, doing jobs around his neighborhood to afford groceries, homework and trying to spend time with his friends.

After Georgie died, the charade was lifted and his parents didn’t even try anymore. The co-existed as ghosts to each other, as ghosts to  _ Bill. _ Bill had lost three family members when Georgie had died - but he knew deep down he had lost his parents long before that.

Bill hated love. It was all a front to make lonely people feel better about themselves by dragging a life partner and kids down with them.

Bill  _ hated _ love - which is why he was so shocked when he realized at the delicate age of twenty, that he had been in love with his friend, Ben Hanscom ever since he was sixteen.

It had hit him suddenly one day. A cloudy summer’s day, too cool to stay outside all day, he had walked to Ben’s house - as he usually would every day. He hated staying at home, Bill would only cross the threshold of the cold kitchen door to wash his duffel bag of clothes, take the twenty dollars that one of his parents, (he never bothered to ask which) would leave on the kitchen table, weighted by a stained coffee cup which Bill reckons hadn’t been used in months, and leave to stay at Ben’s - or Richie’s - or whoever would open their front door for him for a couple of nights. He had been sitting on Ben’s bed, legs crossed as he doodled absent-mindedly, more interested in watching his friend deep in thought over his new poem.

There was a certain type of homeliness Bill felt in the Hanscom house that he didn’t feel with his other friends - of course the Uris’s were kind and would always offer to drive Bill to his Speech Therapist in Bangor and would always make him an extra portion of food because Bill was a growing boy with a growing appetite. The Tozier’s would always set up the guest room for him, even though he always ended up sleeping on the battered loveseat at the corner of Richie’s bedroom. But the Hanscoms were different - there was a warm, glowing feeling that would fill Bill’s stomach whenever he walked through the yellow-painted kitchen door to the smell of Mrs.Hanscom’s cooking, or one of her scented candles, or the smell of the wood on the fire from the living room across the hallway. The house was always bustling with movement - even when it was empty. The wood from upstairs would settle, the pipes would clang with the oil heating up, the radio would drone on about some news in New York from the kitchen, the sprinklers in the garden would flicker on and off every now and again, the lights in the fish tank in the living room would make a low buzzing noise. The house was always filled with motion, yet Bill’s always felt stagnant. 

Bill had looked at Ben, whose soft face was curtained by the warm light on his desk, brow furrowed in concentration as he thought of what to write. He had began to grow through his puppy fat, he had shot up when they were sixteen - barrelling over six-foot quicker than Richie had done. He was still soft, he still had a soft face and a belly - and Bill never really thought much about it. Ben was perfect, he was always perfect. Ben was perfect when he was small and round - he is perfect now, tall and sturdy - and if he ever changes, Bill knows that he will still be perfect.

Ben was his friend, he was soft, gentle and was the best listener out of everyone. He would sit for hours with Bill, who at the time, had barely known Ben a month, letting Bill grieve the death of his brother, letting him cry into his shirt and into his pillow night after night. He would bring him a glass of water and some fruit and tell him it was okay to be sad - he will feel better after the sadness goes - but he has to let the sadness out first. Ben would sit with him and encourage Bill through his speech therapy exercises, encouraging him through all the frustrations and occasional tears. Ben would sit beside him and write with him under the quiet blanket of an Autumn evening, staying up long past their bedtime as Bill spilled droplet of ink onto the page and onto the  _ 1992 DERRY FAIR  _ hoodie that Ben had let him borrow many seasons prior. 

Through all of this - Bill would gaze at Ben as if he was his world - in a way he was. He realized he was in love with Ben, suddenly but not with shock. It wasn’t as though he was drenched in cold water at the notion - discovering that he was in love with Ben Hanscom was more like walking into a warm home after being outside in the snow all day. It was like slipping into a warm bath after a long day. It was like coming home. It was familiar in a way that felt right, it had been there all along - and although Bill is a little scared - love is, after all, something with the potential to make or break your own humanity - but he doesn’t feel as though it is a sham. He can’t imagine ever treating Ben the way his parents treated each other. The very thought made him feel a little sick.

He told Ben the moment he realized - because he could trust Ben with anything. Ben simply peered from his chair at the page Bill had been doodling on - countless studies of Ben’s face littered the page, different angles, different clothes, different expressions - all of Ben. And Bill would never deny that it was only one page of many that had been adorned with his friend’s face. Ben had simply smiled softly at him,  _ ‘I knew you would figure it out someday. I love you too.’  _

Bill never went back to the Denbrough house, except to pick up the rest of his things and some photos of him and Georgie. His parents had stuffed them all in the bottom of a cardboard box in the corner of the garage as if pretending their sons had never existed. He stayed with the Hanscom’s from then on, sometimes in the guest bedroom, sometimes curled up with Ben, reading poetry books over Ben’s shoulder. He understood the warm feeling he got when he entered the Hanscom home. 

It was a house filled with love.


End file.
